Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Chess Skills Elevate Student to Elite College

Diverse in India: Chess Skills Elevate Student to Elite College

by Jamaal Abdul-Alim , August 15, 2011

CHENNAI, India -- With the blessings of his parents, VAV Rajesh made a decision at the tender age of 11 to move to this bustling city that is considered the “Mecca of Indian chess” in order to become a professional chess player.

Five years later—like a sacrifice meant to gain a better position on the chessboard—Rajesh’s decision has already paid off.

After being taken in and sponsored in chess tournaments by the highly esteemed Vellamal boarding school, eventually, Rajesh’s chess skills stood out so much that they enabled him to bypass India’s onerous college entrance exams and gain one of the seats reserved for athletes at Loyola College, where this fall, Rajesh, 16, is set to complete his first semester as a freshman majoring in computer science.

Like Loyola University in Chicago or Loyola University Baltimore, Loyola College in Chennai is just as much Catholic and Jesuit. A recent visit to the campus found students perambulating about the school’s dusty, half-grassy courtyard near the life sciences and main buildings on an examination day. It was about midday when a prayer was said by a school official over the loudspeakers.

For what it’s worth, the college, which was founded in 1925, emerged as the No. 3 arts college in India in a recent series of college rankings published by India Today.

The school happens to be the alma mater of reigning world chess champion Viswanathan Anand, who also hails from Chennai.

Students told a visitor that the tuition is 8,000 rupees per semester. Recently, that translated to about $178—dirt cheap by American standards.

Rajesh—whose parents are high school teachers in his native Andhra Pradesh, a nearby Indian state—says the college’s reputation as the best college in Chennai factored prominently in his decision to go to the school. He heard about how good it was from current students and alumni.